CSN stations now mostly talk

[AnyHuman]

Previously, the CSN network of translators in Texas were mostly music with a talk program here and there...
However now they're mostly talk with maybe an hour of music every day. I checked their daily playlog for December 6th, the last one they currently have up, and there's only 1 hour of tunes in early morning at 04:00 to 05:00 central.

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I'm not sure when the change happened, but maybe the talk programming will work better for them, as most translators have low quality audio that sounds good for talk but less good for music.

 

[b-turner]

Obviously more ministries means more 'share' dollars from their offers to listeners. Ministries send a portion of donations to stations that carry their program based on donations received within the zip codes in the station's coverage area.

What? translators have lesser sound quality? You don't have a clue. The transmitter made by a company to FCC specs is the same quality if it is designed for a translator or a full class C. That's like saying a light bulb maker intentionally makes their 60 watt bulbs inferior to the 100 watt bulbs or McDonalds intentionally makes the hamburger meat for their cheeseburger inferior to the burger patty used on the Big Mac.

 

[Kent]

What? translators have lesser sound quality? You don't have a clue. The transmitter made by a company to FCC specs is the same quality if it is designed for a translator or a full class C. That's like saying a light bulb maker intentionally makes their 60 watt bulbs inferior to the 100 watt bulbs or McDonalds intentionally makes the hamburger meat for their cheeseburger inferior to the burger patty used on the Big Mac.

That's not how I read it. When it comes to translators, I suspect a lot of them don't spend what they should on engineering and maintenance. I've heard plenty of translators that are clearly run on the cheap and don't have the amount of care put into them that someone operating a full power station would use. In all fairness, those translators that sound lousy usually aren't ones relaying AM stations in large clusters owned by corporate entities, but you don't usually have to look very hard to find one or two.

I got out of radio before translators relaying AM signals became common practice. I would guess, though, that broadcast engineers are pretty overextended now with so many of them popping up. Most of the ones I worked with already felt that way and were covering large territories.

 

[AnyHuman]

The translators have good transmitters. I was refering to the feeds which supply them with audio, as well as the processing/compression. They mainly just need more bandwidth on the lossy audio feed, because the last time I heard a signal from them I could tell their connection wasn't the highest bitrate.

 

[b-turner]

Okay, I get that but really, do you change your programming on your host station because you have a lousy feed for your translator? That's what I gather from your post, if I'm interpreting it correctly.

I would contend the ministry programs create more donation shares from offers the ministry programs offers listeners versus the station just playing music.